Smoke and Shadows

by Tanya Huff

  The “we” was almost enough.

  “If I don’t find her, she could lose her job.”

  Which was more or less the truth.

  “No.” The woman with Arra’s cats shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  And that settled it.

  Julian shifted the Chihuahua to his other arm and pushed the door open. “I’m the president of the co-op board and I think we should do everything we can to help a neighbor keep her job.”

  “Well, when I was president . . .”

  “You were the president, Vera. You aren’t now.”

  Moira growled an agreement.

  Tony ignored all three of them and headed toward the computers, moving slowly enough to give the place a thorough once over. No shadows where they shouldn’t be. No inexplicable stains. The laptop was gone, but the desktop was exactly where he remembered it although he couldn’t remember ever having seen one of Arra’s computers without a game of spider solitaire running. And, as it turned out, he couldn’t get into her documents without a password.

  “I think the police should be doing this!”

  His escort had caught up.

  “The police can’t crack her computer without a warrant. I know. I was on DaVinci’s Inquest.”

  “Years ago and you were a corpse!”

  Tony tuned out the argument and typed in “Za-zuWhitby.”

  When it worked, there was a gratifying intake of breath from Julian. “How did you know?”

  “Those cats are the only things she cares about.” Working the mouse with his right hand, he dragged his phone out of his pocket with his left and thumbed the speed dial. Still no answer from her cell. Pity. He’d had a sudden idea that involved telling her he was taking both cats to the Shadowlord. That’d get her thumb out of her ass PDQ.

  Nothing on her calendar. It didn’t look like she ever used her calendar.

  She was using 100GB of a 120GB hard drive—although at least 30G of that seemed to be porn. Didn’t need to know that. It’s like finding out your parents had sex. Totally fucking creepy. Literally.

  He double-clicked a bitmap file labeled Gate and an almost familiar pattern of swirls and equations appeared on the screen. It seemed to be the same pattern he’d glimpsed on her computer at the studio. It was definitely not the same pattern written on the blackboards on the other side of the gate, even given that part of it had been covered by . . .

  “I don’t think you should be looking at her private things.”

  “You’re right.” He closed it out, grateful to have the memory interrupted. No doubt she had a copy of the gate file on the laptop. Probably why she’d taken the laptop with her.

  Her wallpaper was a sunset over water. Yeah, great. Very helpful. As far as Tony was concerned, all water looked the same.

  “What are you doing?” Tucked in behind his left shoulder, Julian seemed to require a play-by-play.

  “She obviously likes this picture, right?” He clicked through the control panel and into design to get the jpeg’s name, then into Arra’s photos. “I want to see if it’s local.” There were two dozen similar pictures of sunsets in the folder labeled Kitsalano Point.

  “Kitsalano Point, it’s that part of Kits Beach just west of the Maritime Museum, that part that pokes out into the bay.”

  Yeah, that would be why they call it a point. Couldn’t be Sunset Beach which was maybe six blocks away. It had to be across the fucking creek. Still, it was a place to start.

  “Are you going to look for her there?”

  “Thought I might.”

  “Do you want a drive?”

  Okay that was unexpected. “I thought you had to wait for the locksmith. President and everything . . .”

  Julian dropped his attention to the dog. “Right.”

  “Look, if you boys want to go off together, I’ll stay and wait for the locksmith.”

  “No, that’s okay, it’s my responsibility.” Shifting Moira to his other arm, he held out his hand. “Good luck, Tony. I hope you find her.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.” For all his affectations, Julian’s handshake was surprisingly firm. Must’ve missed that one when he was filling in the stereotypes form.

  “Wait!” Vera grabbed at his arm. “Your name is Tony?”

  “Yes . . .”

  “Tony Foster?”

  “Yes . . .”

  “How silly of me.” Her giggle suggested they should agree with the assessment. “I heard you tell the police your name, but it never sank in. If you’re Tony Foster, Arra left you a letter. I found it when I went to feed the cats, but then this whole burglary put it out of my mind. It’s in my apartment, I didn’t, of course, have a chance to mail it. Is it short for Anthony?”

  “Is what?”

  “Tony. Is it short for Anthony?”

  “Yes. It is. My letter?”

  “Wait here.” A pat on the place she’d grabbed. “I’ll get it.”

  Back in the hall, the two men and the dog watched Vera scuttle off to her apartment.

  “You’re thinking of strangling her, aren’t you?” Julian asked conversationally.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  The letter was no help at all. It didn’t tell him where she was. It didn’t tell him what to do. It didn’t offer anything but more excuses.

  What point in trying when loss is foreseen . . .

  Nice attitude, old woman.

  “The point of trying is trying!”

  “You have a fortune cookie back there?”

  “What?” Tony stared at the back of the cabbie’s head for a moment. “Uh, no. Just thinking out loud.”

  “Do or do not, there is no try!”

  “What?”

  “Yoda.”

  “Right.” That would make him Luke Skywalker, Amy could be Princess Leia, Henry’d have to be Han Solo riding to the rescue at the last minute, the Shadowlord had that whole Darth Vader thing down although he was significantly better looking, and Arra could be the irresponsible old wizard who chicken shitted away from a fight without even considering that she was fucking taking it somewhere else and now that it had found her was bailing on the whole goddamned mess!

  “Please do not drive your fingers through my upholstery.”

  “Sorry.”

  Less caffeine might have been a good idea.

  Tony had the cab let him off at the corner of Ogden and Maple, which put him west of the museum and shortened his walk out onto the point. He hoped like hell he didn’t have to search the whole beach. It was a big damned beach and even given the crappy weather lately, it was still pretty busy. Not so crowded as it would be in high summer when an oiled sun worshiper couldn’t change position without flipping the whole row, but there were bodies on the sand, at least one volleyball game that he could see, and, if he listened carefully, he could hear the grunts of the body builders heading for hernias. Squinting into the sun, he could see heads bobbing in the choppy water like sea otters. Oh, wait. Those were sea otters.

  He had sand in his shoes, the late afternoon light bouncing off the bay was making his eyes water even behind his sunglasses, and he was in a significantly bad mood by the time he was out on the point.

  No Arra.

  “God fucking damn it!” He dropped down cross-legged and stared west. Since he was here, maybe he should take a moment to think quietly. To try and put all the pieces together. Yanking his phone out of his pocket, he punched in the personal and very private number CB’d given him.

  “Not even my ex-wives have this number. Do not abuse it.”

  “I won’t. I swear.”

  “Profanity will not be necessary.” Tony’d stared at him in confusion. “That was a joke, Mr. Foster.”

  CB answered on the second ring. “Where are you?” he demanded.

  Tony swallowed, trying to force his heart down out of his throat. “How did you . . . ?”

  “Call display.”

  Right. Idiot. “I’m at Kits Beach. On the point.”
r />   “Why?”

  “Arra apparently liked it here.”

  “I see. And is she there?”

  His mouth open to form the negative, Tony paused. Frowned. Changed his response for no reason he could have given except that he suddenly wasn’t . . . sure. “I don’t know yet. Is Mason . . . ?”

  “Mason has been taken care of. I rescheduled the interview and arranged to shoot a new pitch piece to take down into the American markets.”

  “Mason would give his right nut to have the show picked up by a big station.”

  “Indeed. There’s also a photographer coming in to take shots for magazine ads.”

  “You’re doing magazine ads?” The studio had never been willing to spend the money on the glossies before.

  “No.”

  It was amazing how much CB managed to cram into two letters. A negative. A warning of lines about to be crossed. Impatience that Tony had no answers yet. A willingness to take matters into his own hands if it came down to it.

  It might.

  Tony supposed he should be happy he wasn’t about to die alone. Except that he really didn’t want to die at all. And CB would likely end up shadow-held not dead—lots more shadow effective to take over the guys in charge. Unless . . . He chewed at his lower lip. Unless the personalities of the people in charge were strong enough to be a threat. Fuck, I’d hate to be the shadow trying to hold Chester Bane.

  “Mr. Foster.”

  “Yeah. Sorry.” Looked like he wasn’t going to be dying alone after all.

  “I suspect that many of the people here are no longer in my employ. When Mr. Swan . . .”

  It took Tony a moment to remember who Mr. Swan was.

  The Shadowlord held out a hand. “Michael Swan.”

  “. . . wants to know something, the answers he gets are detailed. Fawning. When he makes a suggestion, it is followed.”

  Peter, Adam, Tina . . .

  “Lee?”

  “I don’t know. As far as I can tell, he seems to be concerning himself mainly with the crew—Mason excepted, of course. He’s fascinated with television, how it works, what it can do, and has every intention of going with Mason to the interview tomorrow.”

  “Then maybe you should have rescheduled it for a little further away!” Tony yelped, his voice shrill enough to garner a response from a passing gull.

  “That would have made Mason very suspicious. We stop this tonight. Before he leaves the studio. Find Arra. Bring her here.”

  Only Chester Bane could cut a connection quite so definitively.

  Find Arra. Bring her here.

  “Oh, yeah, like that’s the easy part,” he muttered at the phone before slipping it back into his pocket.

  Unwilling to leave—not sure why but trusting his instincts—Tony swept his gaze over the beach, north then south. If asked, he’d probably say he was waiting. Actually, since he didn’t know anyone in the immediate area, if asked, he’d probably tell the nosy bastard to fuck off.

  What was he waiting for?

  “Who the hell knows.”

  The otters were gone and the water offered no immediate answers. He shimmied himself into a more comfortable position. Seemed like he was going to be here for a while. The sand was dry and warm and Tony scooped up a handful, pouring it slowly into his other palm; then back again, and again, the action mesmerizing. He’d never really watched the way sand moved before; all the tiny pieces falling . . .

  . . . into . . .

  . . . place.

  Amy’d asked the right question. What’s his motivation?

  “Not conquest—not until I gave him that new and exciting tailor-made for a Shadowlord way to use television to reach the masses. No, if all he wanted was to conquer and destroy and enslave, he could have done that any time to any world the moment he worked out the gates and he hasn’t.” The shadow had been fairly clear on the whole searching thing. “He’s been searching seven years for this particular world. For the wizard who got away.”

  A young gull, its feathers still mottled brown stared at him curiously, decided the noise didn’t involve eating, and moved on.

  “And while he’s definitely—as Arra pointed out—a vindictive bastard, he’s not just tying up loose ends. He’s put way too much effort into this for that. It took him seven years to piece together the bits of information she left behind. Getting what information he could from those last two . . .” Tony swallowed, seeing them again, seeing them like he saw them every time he closed his eyes. “A guy like that—a guy who can do something like that—doesn’t put this kind of work into a project without a bigger payoff than dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. He has a gradational scale of minions, for God’s sake, he’s very much the center of his own universe! For all this, he has to believe she’s a danger to him.”

  Tony tossed aside the old handful of sand—it had lost that silky, sun-warmed feel—watched the pattern the wind made as it caught the grains, and scooped up a new one.

  “He came himself. He didn’t trust this to minions. You know something, Arra. Something that can hurt him. Big magic’s complicated, it’s all math and patterns and you have to write it down to work it out. Big magic like the gate. Big magic like whatever’s written on a blackboard he hasn’t erased for seven years.”

  The sand wasn’t enough now. The pieces coming together were bigger. Tony tossed his second handful after the first, then started sifting stones out of the beach and piling them one on top of the other. “What did you call it that day in the car? The light of Your-a-manatu or something? You woke up and yelled it out like it was important. Like it was a eureka moment. You wizards, that order of yours, worked out something you thought could stop him. But you did that crystal ball thing and saw that it didn’t work.” A hand against his pocket. The letter crinkled. “You saw him win and you believed what you saw and you ran. The last two wizards weren’t enough. Self-fulfilling prophecy.”

  The stone on top of the pile was about as big around as a twonie and maybe twice as thick.

  “Just . . .”

  The stone felt good in his hand.

  “. . . like . . .”

  Tony drew back his arm.

  “. . . this . . .”

  And threw the stone as hard as he could off to his left toward the water. Off the way the wind had been blowing the sand.

  “. . . TIME!”

  “OW!” Rubbing her shoulder, a hummock of beach became a wizard who turned and glared at him. “I didn’t decide to gate until after I cast the stones and saw him win countless times.”

  “I think that deep down you decided to bail when your eldest got flamed.” He picked up another stone. “I think you’d been second to him for a whole lot of years, got used to thinking that he was the better wizard, the best even, and when he was taken out, it all came down on you. They wanted you to save them now and you cracked under the pressure. That’s what I think.”

  Arra clutched at her laptop case so tightly her knuckles whitened. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Yeah?” The beach had gone quiet. Even the waves were whispering against the shore. Tony stood, walked across the sand, and dropped to one knee so his eyes and Arra’s were level. “You know how I survived on the street for five years? I heard all the bits and pieces that everyone else heard, but I put them together. I figured out what they meant. You tell me one thing I’ve gotten wrong. One thing.”

  The silence continued.

  Then a gull screamed and noise rushed back in to fill the spaces.

  “It’s the Light of Yeramathia!” Arra snapped. “Not Your-a-manatu.”

  “Fine.” He sat down, yanked some room into his jeans, and crossed his legs. “One other thing.”

  “This time isn’t at all like that time. This time there’s only one wizard, not three. Or two.”

  Tony shrugged. “He thinks there’s a chance you can beat him or he wouldn’t have put this much work into finding you. Besides, new world—new rules.”
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  “What are you talking about? He’s evil; he doesn’t follow rules!”

  “Not those kind of rules.” He had to believe she was being deliberately obtuse. “You told me it takes time to learn to manipulate the energy of a new world. You’ve had the time; you’ve had seven whole years that he hasn’t. All he has are shadows.”

  “All he has?” Arra snorted.

  “Yeah, and if we don’t stop him by tomorrow evening, he’ll control everyone who watches Live at Five.”

  “What?”

  The expression on her face was everything he could have hoped for. “It’s a two-for-one deal—double your pleasure, double your fun. It’s a search for you and it’s a conquest. Hell, for all I know it could also be a dessert topping.”

  “Tony!”

  “He’ll probably do the people who produce Live, too, come to think of it—that’ll give him access to their studio, the morning show, the noon show, the news, and a whole lot more people.”

  “Tony, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Television.” He buried his fingers in the sand. “Shadows made of light. Your Shadowlord’s going to use it to create enough shadow-held to find you, help destroy you, and then take over the world. Henry said it way back in your apartment: evil is never content with what it has. It has to keep moving, keep acquiring.”

  “He doesn’t know anything about television!”

  “He knows what I know. And he’s a smart guy with access to everyone in the studio; he’s figuring it out.”

  Her eyes widened. “He’s in the studio? He’s here?”

  It was Tony’s turn to stare for that long moment. Arra seemed to be doing her best to make him believe that she wouldn’t be sitting here if she’d only known it had gotten that bad. Just another lie to make it easier to live with herself. With what she’d done. Lie to yourself if you have to, but leave me out of it. “Don’t give me that crap. You had to have felt him come through the gate this morning. You couldn’t have missed that kind of an energy . . .” There was a word. He couldn’t think of it. “. . . thing. You had to have known he was here while you were moping around getting sand in your knickers.” And drawing gate patterns with a stick, he realized suddenly. Reaching out in front of her, he rubbed them out with the side of his hand. “What you might not know is that the moment you open the gate, he’ll know where you are and he’ll be on you like a dirty shirt.”